


False Prognosis

by CommanderInChief



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Fake Dating, i am trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6895384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderInChief/pseuds/CommanderInChief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During her career, Serena'd met more than her fair share of malfunctions of the heart. </p><p>It was just her luck that hers would be of the untreatable variety. </p><p>Amore peribat.</p><p>Or, in other words, love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Marching into her shared office, Serena took no shame in draining a long swig from a small hip flask.

“I saw that,” remarked Bernie, as if her colleague had rolled her eyes at someone as opposed to braking major hospital policy.

“It’s coffee, before you get excited – double expresso, closest thing to a whisky that I can get away with drinking at 7am before everyone starts calling me an alcoholic,”

“Hmmm… funny that. Spit it out then, what’s happened within the first… What is it? Hour of your shift to be leading you to drink already?”

She took another sip, grimacing slightly when the lukewarm, bitter liquid hit the back of her throat. “Edward,”

Bernie snapped her head up from her paperwork “He’s here?”

“Yes. They took him up to the ward last night after he went to A&E complaining about severe chest pains. He reckons it’s a sports injury but my money’s on it being the drink finally catching up with him,” 

“Bloody hell – are you alright?”

 She exhaled deeply, swilling the last dregs of coffee at the flask “Not really. It wouldn’t be so bad if he stopped for breath in between showing me photos of his new wife. Honestly, if ever there was a face that screamed _‘leave me by the side of the road with my lipstick jammed half way down my oesophagu_ s ’. The only saving grace is that he thinks I’m still the image of domestic bliss with Robbie,”

“Remind me never to let you near my make-up bag. I take it you don’t want to tell him-”

“That last night Jason was out at chess club so I spent the evening eating a microwave curry for two washed down with two glasses of Shiraz,” The latter of which was still lightly throbbing at the back of her head. Hospital lighting wasn’t kind to hang-overs and it certainly didn’t help that she’d ran out of aspirin.

Nodding in acknowledgement, Bernie almost managed to hold back the smirk “Classy,”

“Yes, well, just because we can’t _all_ be having passionate love affairs with mysterious women overseas doesn’t mean you have to drain away what little excitement’s left for the rest of us,” Serena’s voice lowered towards the end of her sentence. Alex was almost as sore a subject for the blonde as Edward had been for her. She dropped her eyes “Sorry, that was… probably uncalled for,”

“No, no, chances are deserve it anyway,” she said distantly. Her eyebrows came together and Serena could almost hear the cogs turning.  

“What?” She asked flatly.

“You said that you want him to think you’re in a relationship…” Bernie began in the voice that Serena took to mean that there was at least a fifty percent chance that she wasn’t about to like where the sentence was going “I know that Robbie’s long gone but about me for a stand in?”

The brunette swallowed the bitter aftertaste staining her dry mouth, openly running her eyes over the tall, slender build of the woman sat on her desk. The flirtatious quip about having been here before in a dream died a millisecond after reaching the back of her throat “You’re a woman,” She retorted quickly before the idea could bury itself into her mind.

“I see two years at Harvard weren’t wasted on you,”

“You know what I mean, Bernie. Besides, no one would believe us anyway. I mean, we’re not exactly couple material,”

The Blonde leaned forward, tucking a loose curl behind her ear and suddenly smiling “Go on, why not?”

Serena tried to ignore whatever had decided to do star-jumps at the base of her stomach “Because…We’re just not… Look, do you really want a list of reasons?”

“Well, it’d be nice to know where I can improve,”  

“Does anyone ever tell you you’re insufferable?”

“You wouldn’t be the first, stop trying to change the subject. Tell me, why wouldn’t we be couple material?”

“You can’t even keep our office tidy, for starters. Imagine if we had a house together!” The desk alone, barely visible for scattered paperwork and old mugs and god-knows-what-else, looked as if it were harbouring at least six different strands of salmonella.

“Says the woman who has twenty teaspoons dotted around her house at any one time – is it really that difficult to put them in the sink like everybody else?”

“I could say the same about you and your chocolate bar wrappers – the bin is literally about a meter-” Serena was half way through gesturing the distance from the Bernie’s desk to the bin when she noticed Fletch stood in the doorway, grinning. For a second, she froze, half bent over like a conductor about to introduce a string quartet. Only her eyes moved up to greet their new visitor “What?”

He chuckled, rubbing his hands together “Ladies, I’m afraid your presence has been requested in theatre,”

The brunette straightened up, “Right, tell them I’ll-”

“ _We’ll_ be ten minutes, tops,” Corrected Bernie, “Come on then, _dear_ ,”

Serena grit her teeth, glaring back at her co-worker “I hate you,”

She was rewarded with a light laugh barely distinguishable from the smile that somehow managed to light up Bernie’s anatomy. Only when it was too late did she notice said consultant’s arm snaking around her waist. If it was star jumps before, her stomach was doing full on Zumba now.

The blonde rested her head on Serena’s shoulder as they walked,

“No you don’t.”

A few meters behind them, Raf nudged his fellow nurse, gently tilting his head towards where the two most feared consultants in the hospital had just left, giggling like a couple of teenagers. “I put five quid on it,”

Fletch considered it for a moment, “Alright – you’re on,”  



	2. Chapter 2

 “And you’re sure that you haven’t just dreamt this?” Asked Arthur, pushing his glasses slightly further up his nose.

Dom cringed “Ew. Just because some people like to go back to their cold, lonely abode and think about what goes on after hours doesn’t mean that the rest of us are perverts,”

“We haven’t even got to the best part yet, go on, Fletch, tell ‘em about what happened in the consultancy office this morning,”

Had he been in a paper gown, Raf might’ve confused Dom’s expression for a five second pre-vomit warning. “Do we really need to know?”

“It’s not _that bad_ ,” Raf rolled his eyes, about to finish the story himself when a shrill voice snuck up behind them,

“So this’s where you all are. Come on now, enough of the dilly dallying. There’s plenty of time for office gossip when I’ve not a ward full of half-dying patients and no staff. Who knows, by then there might even be something true for you lot to send out,”

“In all fairness, boss, we were only telling them about the conversation with Bernie this morning,” Said Fletch

“Yes, and I’m sure it’d be perfectly riveting if held a shred of truth. Speaking of which - does anyone know where I can find Jason? Bernie reassured me that she was _quite capable_ in theatre so I’ve been left doing the donkey’s work. Her tablet’s playing up, Jason promised me he’d take a look. I left him with his coursework in the staffroom when I clocked in but now I can’t find him anywhere,”

“Oi Jase!” Called Fletch.

Said nephew emerged a moment later from behind a curtain surrounding one of the beds “Sorry auntie Serena - but I was just talking to this lady about her ferrets apparently she’s got twelve of them at home, and she’s going to let me come over and draw them when she gets better!”

“Oh, how lovely,” remarked Serena dryly. Somehow her nephew seemed to be a magnet to dotty old ladies. “Now, Jason I need you to do a very important favour for me; do you remember my friend Ms Wolfe? The lady who came round for tea last Saturday?” She made a point of ignoring any raised eyebrows “Well, the WiFi connection on her IPad seems to have gone and I can’t get hold of tech support until next week so I was wondering if you could take a look at it for me?” She handed over the offending tablet with a slightly pained smile.

Already turning away on her heel, Serena managed to miss Dom’s quiet quip when it was muttered into Jason’s ear “BiFi, more like,”

“Okay,” He replied, before shrugging and walking off, fingers already dancing across the screen.

Dom rolled his eyes “My comedic genius is _so_ wasted in this place,”

 ---

“Ah, Ms Wolfe, just the woman I wanted to see,” said Serena, recognising her office-partner from her inability to open the door without a miniature one-woman wrestling match.

“Ms Wolfe? Assuming that half the hospital thinks we’re dating I would’ve thought that I’d at least get a ‘Bernie’ out of you,”

“You were serious about going through with that?”

Bernie seemed to consider something for a moment “If you can cope with my wrappers,”

“Yes, well, we all make sacrifices for the ones we love - and if mine’s not being able to see the floor for all your mess than so be it,” She said casually before looking up “You are agreeing to taking my teaspoons on board, after all,”

“Teaspoons? Wow, steady on tiger, don’t you think we should slow down a bit? That’s one hell of a commitment for a Tuesday afternoon,”

“Well, if you’d rather take it one item of cutlery at a time-”

Bernie’s face cracked into a full smile, the kind that bunched her cheeks and did something to Serena’s ability to breathe “Okay then, if you insist: one spoon at a time,”

“Well, so long as there isn’t any actual spooning involved then it’s all a-okay with me,” Almost sarcastically, she gave Bernie a couple of brief thumbs-up only to see that said blonde was bent over a filing cabinet and hence looking in the complete opposite direction.

Though, she had to admit, those trousers didn’t half do some favours to… a certain part of her anatomy.

“I’ll try not to be too offended, but, quite frankly, with your sofa being utterly knackered, I can’t see that being _too much_ of challenge,”

Serena flinched, her eyes averting themselves somewhere, _anywhere_ else. If only it were so easy to send her brain the same message. “Sorry, what was that?”

Bernie straightened up, holding a file in one hand and rubbing the back of her neck with the other.

“Oh, I was just referring to the rather large… dip where the springs have gone on your settee,”  
She did her best to look stern “If that’s a comment on the size of my arse,”

“Your words not mine,” The blonde winked on her way out of the office.

Serena laughed half-heartedly until the door clicked itself closed and it was safe to let her head drop onto the desk, trying not to dwell on the idea of the two of them lying entwined on her sofa, her head buried in soft blonde curls that smelt of vanilla and arms wrapped protectively around the dip in her waist, fingers just skimming over the warm skin under her stiff cotton blouse as they slowly-

The frim knocking at the door was a jolt of cold water down her spine.

“Whatever you’ve forgotten, I’m giving it to you - you can learn to open a door like everyone else,” She said, having taken a second to come back to the present.

“What?” The voice on the other side was low. Male. Scottish.

Not Bernie, then.

“Come in, sorry, I thought you were… someone else,”

Looking somewhat amused, Raf let himself in “I’m just here to say that Edward’s X-rays and bloods are back, if you could take a look at them,”  
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” She hesitated, looking down at her paperwork, before adding “And could you errm- could you also get Ms Wolfe? This is one that we agreed we’d take together,”

“Ah, moral support? Can’t say I blame you,” He smiled, hovered in the doorway for a moment too long and finally turned away.

Fletch so owed him a fiver.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiya - just a quick warning for descriptions of needles and (briefly) blood. Not any more graphic than on Holby but just throwing it out there.

The emergency open heart surgery was the easy part.

Open up the chest, stitch up the Vena Cava, repair the damage to the septum and leave the assistant to close up.

With the exception of a couple of quick remarks as they finished the job, the two surgeons spent most of the operation in a natural silence. After all, it was really rather difficult to come up with a witty comeback when you’re elbow deep in a young woman’s ribcage.

If only the same could be said for when the pair came out of theatre and Bernie’s arm reclaimed its previous position around her waist. An action which, Serena noticed, not only gave her the arm to deal with but the entire right side of her body, pressed close to her left.

In other words, she could feel her heartbeat. 

_ Elevated _ was probably the word she looking for. 

“So, um-” Serena looked anywhere but at the woman pressed up against her “-She was lucky, wasn’t she?”   
“What? Being ran over by a reversing bin lorry?” Bernie said. The smirk was audible “I mean, you would’ve thought that the lights and the beeping would’ve been enough,”

“I was talking about the procedure” She could feel the pressure building up in her diaphragm - 100bpm at least “It was touch and go for a minute there,” 

“Yes, well good job she had two of the country’s leading surgeons free to operate on her. Chances would’ve been a bit  _ rubbish _ otherwise,” She gave a light laugh, the vibrations of which weren’t doing the pulse situation any favours.

Serena'd always said that scrubs should be thicker.

“Please tell me, for your sake, that wasn’t intentional,”

“And if it was,”

Serena narrowed her eyes, rising to the challenge “No sex for a week,”

“Then let’s just hope that your ability to hold a grudge is on parr with your sense of humour,” 

There wasn’t time to think of a retort before a voice, like a recurring headache you think you’ve managed to sleep off, did it for her “Oh, if she’s anything like she was back in the day, you’ll be out on the sofa for a month,”

There was no point estimating her pulse now. When you can hear the blood rushing through your ears, it’s not good, no matter how fast it’s going. “Edward,” She tried to wet her lips. No avail “This- this is-”

There was a rush of cold. Bernie was already by the bedside, hand outstretched “Bernie Wolfe, trauma surgeon, Serena’s girlfriend. Lovely to meet you,”

 

\---  

 

“Well, you’re obviously smitten with her,” No matter how hard Serena pressed on the needle, the man seemed to lack the human decency to  _ stop grinning _ “You’ll be very happy together,” 

“You do know we’re not actually dating,” She confessed out of nowhere, flinching slightly as the words, sour with grit, came from somewhere that was neither head nor heart “All the comments about the house, dinner…  _ sex  _ \- it’s just a joke that got out of hand - so you can stop whatever perverted imagery’s obviously whizzing round your head,” She blinked firmly, staring at the syringe as it slowly drew dark red blood. Edward’s blood. Somehow the reality was far less satisfying than she’d hoped. 

Instead of wincing like any normal human being with a test-tube of blood being forcibly extracted from his system, Edward laughed. 

She glared, one hand curling into a fist around the needle whilst the other prepared to slap him into cardiac arrest as he started to speak “You think I didn’t know that already you silly woman?” Then, as if finally seeing the eminent risk of death by strangling, he tried again, more softly this time “That wasn’t what I said. For an intelligent woman, you don’t half know how to miss the obvious.”

“So,” She pulled the needle out of his skin. Slowly “What did you mean, then, as soon as you suddenly seem to know everything all of a sudden? Go on, share your newfound  _ divine wisdom  _ with the rest of us,” 

“I know the look you gave her, Serena, even if it isn’t directed at me,” 

She looked at him like he’d just said that the sun rotated around the Earth “She’s a woman,”

“Yes, I see you’ve spent more than long enough looking at her to work that one out,” 

In the time it took her to scowl, she closed the sample pot and rested her stethoscope around her neck “Oh, go to hell Edward,”   
He delivered his best, most charming, I-can’t-wait-to-stab-you-in-the-back-later smile “See you there,” 

\---

“Wow, you look as if you’ve had an even worse afternoon than I have,” Said Bernie, the sight of Serena alone making her feel drained by osmosis. 

“For some reason, I was the only person on a ward with half a dozen on-call nurses who was able to do Edward’s repeat bloods - he insisted after the first ones came back reeking of ethanol,” 

The blonde leaned back in her chair, resting her feet on the desk. Or rather, on the stack of misprinted pink paperwork on top of it. Bernie Wolfe had many skills - getting the hospital photocopier to print in the right colour wasn’t one of them. Neither, it seemed, was being tactful “So how did it feel, getting your pound of flesh?”

“Not as good as if it’d come out of a stab wound, I must say,”

“And to think Jason’s the one with a therapist,” 

“Everyone has their fall downs. Anyway, enough of that. What was your afternoon like?” 

Bernie’s sigh could’ve been heard from A&E “Great, if it weren’t for the nurses sniggering whenever I go through a ward,”

“Ah-,” She said dryly “That’ll be Miss Black and her clique, then. You know what the rumour mill’s like around here,” 

The blonde twirled a half dead biro between two neat, slender fingers. Absent mindedly, her eyes followed them down to a set of immaculate square nails that’d been cut short - recently, by the looks of it. Serena’s brain wasn’t quite sure what to do with that particular piece of information. 

Unfortunately, her cheeks did. They were already burning. 

“Serena?”

She looked up, her face doing little to regain its sense of dignity. Apparently, she’d just been asked a question. Her mouth went dry. “Yes, umm, probably, if that’s what you were thinking,” The blonde’s eyebrow rose as she struggled on, her voice becoming weaker by the millimeter. But it was the pointed tilt of the head that finally caused Serena to put herself out of her misery “Okay, you got me!” She held up her hands with an, admittedly rather camp, flick of the wrists “I wasn’t listening,” Then, more quietly, seeing that she might’ve overdone it “This damned headache’s driving me round the twist,”

“Hangover more like,” Bernie didn’t pause to think before the retort was out of her mouth. What was it the bloke with the moustache used to say on Doctor Who? _ Five rounds rapid _ . 

“Sush - I thought you were complaining about the nurses,” 

“Not exactly. I was just saying that if they’re gossiping about us then they’ll be at least six hours behind the rest of the hospital. Has anything happened between you and Edward?” 

_ He’s relapsed again.  _

_ He knows this is an act.  _

_ He thinks I’m in love with you.  _

Serena swallowed “Nothing that the nurses’ll know about,” 

“And that they won’t?”

“He’s Edward, I’ll leave the details to your imagination,” 

Bernie’s face seemed to go a shade darker. If she didn’t know better, Serena would’ve said that the major was  _ blushing _ . Either way, the blonde’s reply was served with a familiar smirk “Dangerous,” 

“Only with  _ your  _ imagination. I really am very sorry to burst your little bubble but no, we didn’t end up having mad sex on the ward,” 

Something about watching Bernie almost spit coffee half way across the office gave Serena a tiny kick of victory.

_ Bullseye.  _


	4. Chapter 4

“Ms Wolfe, Ms Campbell, as I’m sure you’re aware, we, as a hospital, have received a warning of a misconduct allegation against you from another member of staff. As a fellow consultant, it’s my duty to follow these up before they get to Hanssen,” Jac began in a voice that made Serena flick through a mental slideshow of every petty little policy someone with a grudge would be able to pick up on. Most of them involved Bernie in one way or another. 

“However, as your colleague, I am also, albeit begrudgingly, obliged to give you a heads-up before anyone can file an official complaint. I’m presuming we all know what this is about?”

“If it’s got anything to do with our relationship-” Serena’s mouth went into motion before her brain did.

“No, actually,” The redhead leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, almost offended. Although, with Jac, Serena could never quite tell “You can go and shag in a supply cupboard until your brains turn to mush for all I care,”

“I take it you haven’t called both of the AAU’s consultants off of the ward to congratulate us?” 

The tilting of Jac’s head hold Bernie all she needed to know “Ms Wolfe, I do very much hope that you’re aware that every nurse, doctor and porter in this hospital can read your mobile internet signal as ‘Bernie’s Bi-Fi’?”

“Jason,” The syllables fell from Serena’s lips and into the quiet with a solid nine-point dive.  

Jac didn’t comment “I’ll leave you to it - after all, as Ms Wolfe pointed out, you are both very busy doing each other if not work,” The chair scraped across the carpet and, in the time it took Serena to come back into focus, she could already hear heels clicking on the ward’s hard stone floor. 

Two clicks later and both women were in a hopeless fit of giggles.

“I-I’ll kill him!” Bernie got out before making a noise that was less of a laugh and more a cat getting stuck in a tumble dryer. 

“And you- And you thought they were laughing because-” With aching ribs, Serena collapsed against the desk, slowly slipping out of her chair. It wasn’t long before Bernie, now cackling, joined her.   

The NHS budget equating roughly to three buttons and an M&S sandwich, hospital desks weren’t exactly spacious. And, with Bernie falling back to rest her head on Serena’s chest, the fake-wood boards were closer than she remembered. That she realised the air was screaming like a banshee inside of her lungs for a completely different reason.

_ She was holding her breath. _

“Bernie-” The sound came out strangled by the lump building in her throat. 

The blonde shifted almost onto her hands and knees look at her, her knee putting pressure on what had already began to quietly throb, reducing Serena’s thoughts to a repeating loop of ‘ _ Shit.Shit.Shit.Shit.Shit’  _

“Are you alright? I’m not hurting your back?”

She was close enough to taste chocolate on her breath.”No, no, my- ummm.. My back’s fine. Dandy. Singing your praises,” Brown eyes flitted down just long enough to catch a smudge of Cadbury’s on the corner of her mouth. Her own was shaking. Trying to focus on the darker outer iris of Bernie’s eye, she said, quieter this time “I had a point to this somewhere,” 

“Serena, if you wanted to get underneath me, all you had to do is ask,”

“What?” It was as much a reflex as if she’d dodged an incoming football or downed half a glass of Shiraz before a board meeting. 

Bernie laughed, causing her knee press harder against a certain part of Serena’s anatomy. 

“Bernie-” It came out long and dry and with more gravel than a chav’s drive-way -a sound that seemed to take them both off-guard. At least, if the twitch of the blonde’s eyebrows was anything to go by. 

“Serena, what’s the ma-” Her eyes followed Serena’s straight to the placement of her knee… If ‘straight’ was the right word. For a second, she froze, her face the very image of what Serena imagined a human being ‘buffering’ would look like “Oh,” The lump in her throat was visible when she swallowed “I’m sorry… If I… made you... uncomfortable,”

In an action she already  _ feel  _ herself regretting, Serena caught Bernie’s arm before she could get to her feet “Don’t be,” What was intended to be a replica of her usual chirp was probably closer to the noise a budgie makes when you strangle it.  _ Oh well  _ “I mean, we might not be in a supple cupboard - but Jac  _ did _ say we were allowed to  _ shag until our brains turn to mush  _ if we so feel like it,”

It was a joke but six heart-beat’s worth of eye contact and one unspoken conversation later, Bernie smiled, rested a hand on her cheek and suddenly, she wasn't quite so sure. 

“Serena, if I kissed you, here and now, would you run away?”

“It depends - is this real or-” 

“It’s always been real” Her voice was quiet but certain “I think the only people who didn’t twig onto that was us,”

“You know, I almost feel like there’s something I should say to you,” 

“Not here. Not now. I think there’s something we need to do first,” Bernie’s thumb caught on the edge of Serena’s bottom lip. 

Then, just as she was about to retort with something about being a ‘ _ bloody tease _ ’, Bernie came closer. The wall crumbled. They weren't ‘colleagues’ or ‘friends’ or ‘rivals’, they were just two people, holding their breath as they gave in to the oldest cliché on earth. 


End file.
